Put On a Happy Face
by Forkhead
Summary: One shot. No slash. A Dutchy fic. "It doesn’t matter how bad you feel. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you’ve done, put on a happy face and no one knows you. They don’t know what you’ve done."


**Disclaimer: Don't own a thing.**

_Author's note: You know that part in The World Will Know when the camera pushes through the newsies and you can see Dutchy is holding Tumbler over this shoulder? Well, as you may know, I'm a sucker for the older/younger boy brotherly fics, so I had to write a Dutchy/Tumbler story to go with my collection :)_

_I think it worked out okey-dokey, but you tell me!_

_(And I know I should be working on my other fics, but I promise I'll try to get an update sometime this weekend!)  
_

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My entire life, I've grown up with the same mantra playing in my head: Put on a happy face.

It doesn't matter how bad you feel. It doesn't matter who you are, or what you've done, put on a happy face and no one knows you. They don't know what you've done. If you don't seem to have a past, they're not going to be curious, and you'll be safe.

I've lived with these words so long, I've learned how to push my thoughts out of my head. I've learned to forget. I've learned to make my smiles so saccharine even I forget they're just illusion.

I have not past. No future. No sadness. I just have a smile.

Now I'm laying on the thin mattress in my bunk, and my hand gropes across the little table by the bunk. I hear my glasses clatter across the lodging house floor. I groan and drop my hand over the edge of the bed, feeling blindly, my eyes still shut. My hand hits something.

It's breathing.

I jolt awake and lean to look under my bunk, knocking my head on the table in the process. I rub my forehead and lean over again, avoiding the table. I can barely make out in the shadowy, blurry space between the mattress and the floor, a dark head and light long johns.

Tumbler.

I roll back over and close my eyes groggily, trying to gather a few more moments of rest.

Tumbler being on the floor means one of three things: it stormed last night, he'd dreamed about his mother, or Skittery hadn't come back to the lodging house.

I hadn't heard any thunder last night, so it was probably one of the other two.

"Tumbler?" I say, "My glasses, please."

I sleepily knock on the wood frame of the bunk, "Tumbler, I dropped my glasses."

I let my hand hang over the edge. After a slight scurrying noise, I feel the cool metal and glass of my spectacles pressed into my palm.

"Thanks," I mutter.

I blink as I put the lenses over my eyes, trying to make my eyes focus behind the glass that's too weak for me to make out details, but they're better nothing. I scan the slightly blurry room. A couple of the other newsies are lumbering around groggily, and the new boy a few bunks down is snapping his fingers, but Klopp hasn't come up yet, so it's still fairly quiet.

I squint and I can see Skittery asleep on a top bunk, his knees hooked over the end making his feet dangle past the edge. So, it hadn't stormed and Skittery had come in, Tumbler must have had a dream about his mother.

"Tumbler?" I say again, leaning over the edge.

His little face peeks out from under the bunk, his dark hair splayed out like a mop across the dusty wood. He grins up at me.

"Mornin', Dutchy." He says.

"Mornin'," I mutter, "Come up 'ere." I roll over so he'll have room on the tiny mattress. Tumbler slides in next to me, letting out a big yawn. He sighs happily and pulls the thin cotton blanket up to his chin.

"Why were you on the floor?" I ask, stifling a yawn that was trying to mimic his.

"Bad dreams." He says after a pause.

"Your mom?" I say, even though I know the answer before he nods. "What happened in your dream this time?"

"She was laying on the floor, staring at nothin', just like when she died in real life, but when I started to shake her she woke up." He frowns. "She started walking around, but she kept falling over. Domonic, my daddy, helped her up and the two of them left the apartment without me. I kept following them, but they acted like they couldn't even hear me. Then I tripped down the stairs and woke up. I couldn't sleep up there so I crawled under the bed."

Tumbler and I lay still for a moment.

"I'm sorry." I say.

"It's okay."

There's another pause. I can hear Specs snoring just slightly.

I smile to myself, I like listening to the other newsies around me. I like having people near me.

"Who's Ruth?" Tumbler asks.

I flinch. "What?" My voice is icy.

"Ruth. You kept saying her name in your sleep." Tumbler's gaze cuts to mine from the corner of his eyes. "You said 'sorry' sometimes, too."

"Huh." I say. A cold panic slides over me.

"So?" Tumbler asks.

I feel my lungs being pinched. I frown and watch as a few more boys slither awake and towards the wash room.

"We should get up and get ready for selling." I say, ignoring the question and pushing a smile across my face. Put on a happy face. Build a wall around yourself. Keep your past to yourself.

I throw my feet over the edge of the bed and stumble toward the wash room. I grasp at the smile still covering my face, forcing it to hover until I get into one of the stalls. I hold the door shut and my smile cracks and flakes to the floor.

I close my eyes and push my forehead against the inside of the door. The thin wood crackles under my skin but I push harder.

The images continue creeping into my mind's eye. I push my forehead into the harsh, biting wood a little harder, trying to stop them.

I feel the wood start to give way and I pull back. I push my hands to my face, shoving my ill-fitting glasses into my eyes. I rip them off and throw them down, one of the lenses cracks as it scuttles across the floor.

Why can't I make the images in my head as blurred as the ones in my eyes?

The images rise inside me like sour acid. Flashing, burning.

I suck in a ragged breath as I hear Klopp's footsteps on the stairs. Soon enough, everyone will be awake, and I'll have to pretend I don't see the images flickering across my mind.

But I can't escape the images, or their story.

I had been thirteen, new to the country still, and homeless.

My mother had died on the ship, and my father, who had been living in America for two years as he saved money for our passage, had died before our ship docked.

The sky was black, not a single star showed through thick clouds above. Gray snow was piled across the alley I huddled in. The ice hung like teeth along the eaves, waiting to devour me. I was wearing my father's thick winter coat, but the cold still made my bones ache. I was wearing thin, wet socks inside my pinching shoes.

I wasn't alone. My sister was there with me, Ruth. But little Ruth had nothing but her dress and thin shawl. She didn't even have shoes because she'd sold them for food without my knowing.

I held her in my lap, even though she was eleven, and too old for it. I was terrified. She was blue. Her toes were dark. I could see that even in the ghostly light that cascaded from the windows around us. She was shaking, her skin was raw. I held her against me, rocking her.

She asked for the coat, but I wouldn't take it off.

I wouldn't take it off for her, even though she was dying.

I was too afraid of what would happen to me, to take off the coat and give it to her.

I killed her.

Now as I huddle in the stall, warm and safe, I shove my hands into my eyes and slam my head against the door. I hum to myself, the song I had sung quietly to Ruth as she died in my arms. I rock now, just slightly, swaying on my feet.

Singing to her in that bitter alley had been a worthless thing to do. I had the power to save her, and I could have lived without the coat, but I didn't try. I was selfish and cowardly. I killed her. I held her and let her freeze in my arms.

We sat for hours.

She went stiff.

I had felt the guilt bubble inside me as I looked at her frozen body. I shook off the coat and wrapped it around her, now useless, but I couldn't bare wearing it anymore. I killed her with my selfishness.

I left her under a pile of snow, but before I left I saw another homeless boy rooting through after her clothes. I hadn't tried to stop him.

Instead, I had wandered the cold, gray world for hours, holding my happy face over me like a mask. A place to hide in.

Then, I turned the corner and I saw boys gathered around The World's distribution center. They were talking, laughing, smiling. I fit right in, and they excepted me gladly. I had found my new home, and I bought a new coat, and I held the images of Ruth tucked away safely.

Or I tried to.

I can hear the other boys moving around now, filling the wash room. They're talking, laughing, teasing.

I hear Swifty describing in detail a girl he'd seen on his rout. I hear Racetrack talking Snipeshooter through the steps of shaving. I hear Tumbler's voice going on, and on about a bird he and Les had fed a piece of bread to the day before. I hear Skittery's patient replies, "Uh-huh. Really? How much did he eat? No!"

I crack the door and see Tumbler trailing happily behind Skittery, still talking as he follows him across the room.

"You done?" Itey asks, pointing at the stall behind me.

I blink. I feign a smile and nod.

"Yeah." I say, stooping down and picking up my now cracked glasses. "Sorry, yeah. Here."

Itey starts to go past me into the stall then stops, "You okay, Dutch?"

I keep the smile on and nod.

I pull my glasses back over my eyes but can hardly see through them. I take them off and try to clean them on my undershirt. I hold my smile stiffly across my face, but I feel tears pushing up. I shove the glasses back on my face and look for a place to slink off to. I can't cry in view of the others, I need my mask too badly.

I go back to the bunk room and star dressing.

Tumbler is there suddenly, staring up at me from under this messy brown bangs, his cap is on backwards.

"What do ya say?" I ask him, forcing a tearful smile. I'm clinging to any measure of my mask I can hide behind.

Put on a happy face. It doesn't matter how awful you are, or what you've done, put on a happy face. Hide and they'll have no reason to hate you. They'll never see the blackness that covers you.

I force my smile wider, and Tumbler tilts his head, squinting up at me.

"It's okay to cry, you know." He says. "You don't gotta smile when you got something to cry about."

I drop my head down. His words push me over that teetering line. Tears splatter against my cracked lens. I let myself drop my mask, and the tears wash over me with a strangling power. I'd held them down so long, they were consuming. I slid down to the floor and cried harder.

Tumbler's little arms wrap around me as he pulls me into a hug.

My entire life, I've grown up with the same mantra playing in my head: Put on a happy face. It doesn't matter how bad you feel. It doesn't matter who you are, or what you've done, put on a happy face and no one knows you.

This is my secret: I want to be known.

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_A/N: please review :)  
_


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